Morse code symbols: dots, dashes and every sign

Morse code is a timing code. Its building blocks are two sounds and three silences, each measured in units, the length of one dot:

Radio operators say dit and dah rather than dot and dash, because that is how the tones sound. A dot that is not the last in a letter is shortened to di, so L is said "di-dah-di-dit".

The gaps are easy to overlook but they are part of the code: without them, six dots could be HI, SS or six E's. How the gaps work, and how to write them, is in spaces between letters in Morse code.

Each letter links to its own page; press a code to hear it at 18 WPM. There is no upper or lower case in Morse code: A and a are the same signal.

Every number has five symbols, counting up in dots from 1 and then in dashes from 6. The Morse code numbers page shows the pattern and plays each digit.

The letters with the shortest codes are the most common ones in English, which is why E is a single dot; see the most common letters in Morse code. The standard's one accented letter is É; other accented and non-English letters belong to national tables, listed under accented letters in Morse code.

These are the 18 marks the translators on this site send. The first 13 are in ITU-R M.1677-1; the last five are widely used conventions that the standard does not list. Each name links to the mark's own page.

The marks are long: the shortest, the ampersand, is 11 units, as long as the letter O, and the ITU marks start at 13. For every mark with its player, how it is used in a sentence and a printable chart, see punctuation in Morse code.

Some Morse symbols stand for an instruction rather than a character. They are sent as one signal, with no letter gap inside, and are often called prosigns. ITU-R M.1677-1 lists these:

Two punctuation marks double as signals: the cross (+) ends a message, written AR, and the double hyphen (=) separates its parts, written BT. The best-known one-signal sequence, SOS, is not in this list at all: it is the distress signal of maritime radio.

For the abbreviations operators send between these signals, such as CQ and 73, see Morse code abbreviations.

The ITU standard explains how to send a few signs that have no Morse symbol:

• Multiplication sign (×): send the letter X.
• Percent (%) and per mille (‰): send 0, the fraction bar and 0 or 00, as 0/0 and 0/00. A number joins them with a hyphen: 2% is sent as 2-0/0, not 20/0.
• Minutes and seconds (′ and ″): send the apostrophe once or twice after the figures, as in 1′15″.
• Quotation marks on code converters: the apostrophe may be sent twice before and after the words.
• Letters and figures together, such as 25TH, are sent with no spaces between them.

Most people type Morse with two keys: a period for the dot and a hyphen for the dash, with a space between letters and a slash between words. That is the form every translator reads, including the Morse code translator on this site.

You will also meet other characters on charts and in copied text:

• The middle dot (·).
• The bullet (•).
• The en dash (–).
• The em dash (—).
• The minus sign (−).

The ITU's own document prints the dash as a minus sign. The translators here read all of those as dots and dashes, and read an underscore as a dash too, so a code pasted from a chart, a font or a tattoo design still decodes.

To produce Morse in one of those styles for a post or a message, use Morse code copy and paste.

The standard is short. Its main rules for writing and sending are:

1. 1A dash is three dots long. The gap inside a letter is one dot, between letters three, between words seven.
2. 2There is no upper or lower case.
3. 3A group of figures and letters is sent with no spaces inside it.
4. 4A call is the other station's call sign, the word DE, your own call sign, then K (invitation to transmit).
5. 5Every message ends with the cross (+); the end of a transmission is the cross followed by K, and the end of work is SK.

Type any text with punctuation into the translator to see and hear each symbol, or paste dots and dashes to read them back.